Back before Twitter, Facebook, and even Myspace. There was Geocities.
Posted by Ryan Johnson
Who remembers Geocities? All you web veterans out there! It was the first "home" you could say for many internet users back in the 90s. Even though your profile was an extremely long URL and generally filled with annoying and ugly ads, GeoCities was the first "social network".
Yahoo purchased Geocities in 1999 for 3.5 billion dollars, and then 10 years later, shut the site down. But before they pulled the plug, a group known as the Archive Team made a backup to preserve 10 years of collaborative work by 35 million people. The resulting 650 Gigabyte bittorrent file is the digital Pompeii that is the subject of an interactive excavation that allows you to wander through an episode of recent online history.
Head to their site and watch the video. Internet history seems so long ago compared to natural history, we are already unearthing the past from just a mere decade ago. Do you think in another decade we will be doing the same with Facebook or Twitter?
AmEx offers new deals app
Posted by Ryan Johnson
AmEx has created a new app called "Link, Like, Love" that can be downloaded on their FB page. Users can link their American Express cards to the app and choose deals served up based on their likes and check-ins. Say you like American Eagle on Facebook, or you frequently check-in to Whole Foods using Facebook Places, the app will offer you deals to those shops. This whole program is built on AmEx's Smart Offer API's, which aims to put an end to pre-purchasing or print out coupons.
But how do you feel about entering your credit card information into Facebook? The social media platform has had quite a few issues with privacy over the past few years. Either way, AmEx is definitely riding the social media wave and I'm sure retailers everywhere are rejoicing.
Google+ v. Facebook
Posted by Ryan Johnson
The gloves are off and the fight has started. Google+ is the newcomer but already is taking the internet by storm. While it is still in field testing mode, Google+ offers a breath of fresh air from the same old thing with Facebook. We here at Digital Street have been tinkering around in Google+, checking the ins and outs and we must say, we are excited. It has a very nice user interface and is very intuitive. How this will be used in terms of business use is still yet to be seen. Google+ doesn't offer "business pages" but they have some things in the works to answer that question for us too. (See this Mashable article for more)
Facebook isn't going to let this all go on and not retaliate though. So they roll out their new video chat feature supported by their new partnership with Skype. This ads a whole new layer to Facebook's "chat" feature. (Click here to see how to set it up for yourself).
This competition will hopefully push the two powerhouses into a very interesting game of innovation for their respective platforms. And in that case, we all will end up being the winners.
Real Time Features in Facebook
Posted by Michael Herman
Facebook has been testing a new feature for News Feeds that gives the user the ability to view likes, comments and things their friends are sharing in real time.
Real time? Oh yes, real time. Now, few of you might have used TweetDeck when they implemented their “real time” ability. I saw quite a few tweets comparing it to #twittercrack. And now with Facebook looking to roll their version out, I can only imagine the impact it will have on users productivity.
But Facebook is already a master at stealing away productivity; the real problem with this new feature is that it kills off the ad space on the right hand side of the home page. Facebook recently reported that in 2010, their ad revenue was at $1.86B. Staggering yes, so why would they kill off some prime ad real estate? It’s unclear.
Again, these screenshots are still in testing phase but I find it hard to believe that they would bite the bullet on the ad revenue. I expect that if Facebook widely implements this feature, there will be some layout adjustments to still accommodate the ads.
Information Overload: Sifting Through it All
Posted by Ryan Johnson
In this age of social media and news aggregators, it has become almost impossible not to be bombarded by information daily. So how can we as marketers sift through it all to make a better consumer experience? Listen and organize.
The advent of social media and other services has allowed marketers to listen and respond to data being created by consumers like never before. A few years back most companies would kill to have this avenue of communication with their consumers. Now that the connection is built, we must make sure to use it correctly, because it is a very powerful channel. While you can gain knowledge about your audience in a way previously impossible, you can also barge into the conversation blindly and destroy your image. This information combined with site analytics from your webpage can help define the personas that are interested in your brand.
What can you do with this data? You must first stop thinking that everyone views your brands message the same. Things like your homepage and website should be tailor made for a variety of market segments. Whether they get different navigation, different search data or look is up to you and your designers. One thing is for sure though, the days of mass impersonal messaging in advertising and marketing are long gone.
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